IBM announced back in February that with its new software-defined storage line, Spectrum, it intends to change the economics of—and eliminate inefficiencies in—storage forever by adding a new-gen layer of intelligent software, among other things.
The company threw down a cool $1 billion to make it all happen, launched the new big data product line, and now it’s all starting to evolve.
The latest news in all this upheaval came out Nov. 3, when IBM revealed upgrades to the Spectrum Storage lineup. Spectrums are high-end storage systems aimed at improving management and security; they are designed to support cognitive and other data-driven applications across hybrid cloud environments.
IBM Spectrum Storage includes six software offerings: Spectrum Accelerate, Spectrum Archive, Spectrum Control, Spectrum Protect, Spectrum Scale and Spectrum Virtualize.
New features announced Nov. 3 include the following:
— IBM Spectrum Virtualize storage virtualization, which the company said helps clients improve data security and reduce costs, now offers a new software feature that provides data encryption on existing heterogeneous storage systems, eliminating the need to purchase new infrastructure.
— IBM Spectrum Scale software and the IBM Elastic Storage Server integrated system helps clients reduce capital and operating expenses for large volumes of files and objects used by cognitive and cloud applications. New features include data compression to improve storage utilization and efficiency by reducing storage space needed for files and objects and the ability to accelerate Hadoop applications with a new Hadoop File System (HDFS) interface.
— IBM Spectrum Control, which reduces IT costs and complexity by optimizing data and storage, now extends management and data analytics capabilities for IBM FlashSystem and IBM Spectrum Scale file and object storage systems. These enhancements, along with broad support for traditional storage systems, provide an integrated control point for optimizing diverse data infrastructures.
IBM Spectrum Storage, based on more than 700 patents, is designed to keep up with data growth. It provides a new, more agile way of storing data and helps organizations prepare themselves for the cloud and cognitive era, Vice President of Product Marketing Erik Herzog told eWEEK.
IBM Spectrum Storage is based on proven technologies—integrated with a common interface—to help organizations converge their storage infrastructures, cut costs and gain more business value from their data, Herzog said.